#metaphysics

I've often thought that there isn't any "I" at all; that we are simply the means of expression of something else; that when we think we are ourselves, we are simply the victims of a delusion. ↗

— Aleister Crowley

#magic #magick #metaphysics #occult #philosophy

Change happens very slow and very sudden. ↗

— Dorothy Bryant

#feminist #metaphysics #science-fiction #change

-But you don't really mean to say that you couldn't love me if my name wasn't Earnest? -But your name is Earnest. -Yes, I know it is. But supposing it was something else? ... -Ah! That is clearly a metaphysical speculation, and like most metaphysical speculations has very little reference at all to the actual facts or real life, as we know them. ↗

— Oscar Wilde

#life

Sitting there on the heather, on our planetary grain, I shrank from the abysses that opened up on every side, and in the future. The silent darkness, the featureless unknown, were more dread than all the terrors that imagination had mustered. Peering, the mind could see nothing sure, nothing in all human experience to be grasped as certain, except uncertainty itself; nothing but obscurity gendered by a thick haze of theories. Man's science was a mere mist of numbers; his philosophy but a fog of words. His very perception of this rocky grain and all its wonders was but a shifting and a lying apparition. Even oneself, that seeming-central fact, was a mere phantom, so deceptive, that the most honest of men must question his own honesty, so insubstantial that he must even doubt his very existence. ↗

— Olaf Stapledon

#philosophy #self-identity #experience

A morning-glory at my window satisfies me more than the metaphysics of books. ↗

— Walt Whitman

#books #me #metaphysics #more #satisfies

That afternoon She listened to the grievances of the dead from two warring nations. Both sides had suffered, both sides had legitimate grievances, both pled their cases earnestly. She covered Her ears and moaned in misery. She knew Her humans were multidimensional and She could no longer live under the rigid architecture of Her youthful choices. ↗

— David Eagleman

#ontology #religion #architecture

We look for the Secret - the Philosopher's Stone, the Elixir of the Wise, Supreme Enlightenment, 'God' or whatever...and all the time it is carrying us about...It is the human nervous system itself. ↗

— Robert Anton Wilson

#philosophy #philosophical

Look, there's no metaphysics on earth like chocolates. ↗

— Fernando Pessoa

#chocolates #earth #like #look #metaphysics

Do not be afraid of the word 'theory'. Yes, it can sound dauntingly abstract at times, and in the hands of some writers can appear to have precious little to do with the actual, visual world around us. Good theory however, is an awesome thing. [...] But unless we actually use it, it borders on the metaphysical and might as well not be used at all. ↗

— Richard Howells

#art #metaphysics #theory #art

Serenity comes from the ability to say “Yes” to existence. Courage comes from the ability to say “No” to the wrong choices made by others. ↗

— Ayn Rand

#metaphysics #philosophy #serenity #courage